Happiness is… Listening & Appreciating

05.04.2017 |
Michael Moulton

At Teem, we strive to make intelligent tools that encourage collaboration and foster productivity, because even if you have the job of your dreams, if the people, places, and technology are a mess, you won’t be happy. Then what’s the point of spending all the hours at work if you’re not getting any joy out of it?

Last year we decided to dive deeper into the psyche of full-time workers in the U.S. and created the Employee Happiness Index, a benchmark of over 1,300 U.S. workers revealing what motivates (and demotivates) workers. Today, we launched its second iteration and the results revealed some surprising stats about what makes people most happy at their work.

Spoiler alert! There’s a lot of unhappy (or only “somewhat happy”) folks at work – 48%, an increase of 8% from 2016’s report.

Major factors contributing to this malaise is poor work/life balance (48%) and feeling underappreciated in their role (46%). Despite improving collaboration, tech is also a leading contributor to burnout, with 49% of respondents reporting that today’s communication tools make them feel obligated to respond to colleagues regardless of where or when. What does this tell us? Guidelines on tech use and out-of-office communications are a necessity.

Surprisingly, the open office – the darling of modern workplace layouts – is not held in as high esteem as expected, especially amongst millennials as 83% reporting that the lack of privacy in an open-office negatively impacts their work.

Not all is grim, however, as the data also shows a high level of enthusiasm around emerging workplace technologies. Millennials (76%) are most excited about the introduction of digital assistants (like our recent Amazon Alexa skill) to the workplace while boomers (79%) can’t wait to see how augmented reality will change their worklife. The overall perception being that these tools will help to knock off the rote, mundane tasks, allowing them to apply their attentions to bigger move-the-needle projects.

Countering this is the fact that despite all of the tech breakthroughs, in-person communication remains the preferred method to collaborate (42%) — followed by email (19%) and phone (8%).

Teem’s platform was created to identify and address key areas of friction for employees in today’s workplace. And we know from our own experience as well as what we see and hear from our customers, that a streamlined workflow is imperative for a happy and productive office.

Our annual Employee Happiness survey provides us with even more opportunity to better understand what workers want and how we can develop the best technology for relieving stress and boosting morale.

So, to all you burnt out, unhappy workers out there, we see you, hear you, and are on the case with our not-so-modest goal: To make sure work doesn’t burn you, us and our customers, out.